LuttieS Heart
by madis hartte
Summary: "Ideas, ideas, backward is forward. His influence is layers and layers of spirit." -Dizzy Gillespie. The Hatter is banished, Wonderland is disappearing, and the yarn's getting tangled. Oh my. -HatterXOC-
1. Preamble

_Preamble_

The one thing that Luttie would remember most about that night would be the Hatter's eyes and the red gash of his mouth, caught between astonishment and terror. And then he'd turn to her, and smile half-ruefully; right then, with his hair all in disarray and his eyes shadowed by the light of the crystal chandelier of the concert hall, he would truly look mad. "Well then," he'd say, and reach out to take her hand.

Her heart would be singing even as it broke into a thousand pieces.

The Queen would pronounce her verdict.

And that would be that.


	2. Losing It

_Losing It_

There was a knock at Luttie's door. It was a skittering, anxious sound, a quick brush of knuckles across wood. Before she could even call "Who is it?" the door swooshed open, sticking against the floor for a moment before its assaulter shoved the door open the rest of the way with a forceful push.

"Good heavens," Luttie said mildly. She stopped knitting and the rocking chair stopped beating the floor with its bowed feet. "Good heavens. It's the Hatter. It is you, isn't it?"

His hands shook on the knob; water from the rain outside—she had not known it was raining till then, snug inside her tree as she was—plastered his shock-white hair to his equally pale forehead, tangling into his eyes.

One of those eyes stared at her balefully, a washed-out blue amidst all that white, as he shut the door behind him.

Luttie half stood—"I have been exiled," the Hatter said—and she sat back down again, face as pale as her unexpected guest's.

"Exiled," Luttie echoed.

"Exiled," he confirmed. "The queen disapproved of something I may or may not have done"—but the twist of his mouth betrayed him—"and I was exiled from Wonderland."

"Does that include—?" she began, but he interrupted her with a flap of his hands and a, "Yes, yes, all of it. Every single corner, crease, and fold of the realm has been barred from me."

A beat of silence.

"Well. I am glad to see that you still have the doorknob I gave you." Luttie stood fully, pressing her half-finished shawl to the folds of her dress. He blinked, looked down at the brass knocker in his hand, with its lion head of a handle, as though he had forgotten it was there. Of course he could not have gotten into her tree otherwise.

"Oh. Oh, yes, I do, don't I?" Luttie smiled at him, but her smile faded as she stared into his face. The Hatter looked a bit lost, with the water pattering off from his elbows and jacket hem, staining the stiff orange leather a dark shade of amber. She reached out in the cramped quarters, cupped his hand into one of hers, and guided him to the other chair by the fire.

Shoes squelching on the floor he sank down onto the wing-backed chair. The Hatter looked around him. "You've expanded," he said in that dry way of his. "However did you manage to get the fireplace in here?" He wiped the water from his face; with each rub the color seemed to bleed from it, making his evenly spaced freckles stand out in sharp relief.

"It took some pinching and pulling," she admitted as she poured him a cup of tea from the teapot hanging by way of metal hook over the fire. The Hatter took the proffered cup, the steam encasing his features in eddying whirls, face unnaturally still.

Luttie took the seat opposite, picked up her knitting needles. She stared at the shawl for a moment—she'd dropped too many stitches; she'd have to start over—before she said, "Hatter, dear friend, what did you _do_? I should think the queen doesn't exile just anybody."

"This time she might have to." The Hatter took a sip of tea. "What type of brew is this? A bit of mint, I should think, with a bit of gold and sunshine, too—"

"Hatter."

He stopped, looked at her with those blue eyes. "Sorry," he said. "Old habits and all that. But really, you must give me some tea bags before I leave; I am sure March will love—" He stuttered to a halt, obviously just remembering that good friend Hare probably would not be tasting this particular tea, and that if he did it would probably mean that he had been exiled just the same as the Hatter.

Stalling, she thought, but said anyway, "I'll make sure to give you a few bags before you leave. Now tell me, what did you do? I must know if, as you have hinted at, the queen is going to start exiling everybody."

"Someone from outside came in," the Hatter said.

Luttie's sharp intake of breath broke the silence which preceded his statement, her eyes, a mismatched pair of gold and black respectively—which signaled what, exactly, she was—fixated on his face.

"Outside?" was no more than a breath of air. "I-I mean," she said, blushing at his sudden notice of her interest, "I know how to get out—but getting in is another matter entirely. However did the creature manage it?"

"I do not know. All I know is that the creature came in. It called itself 'Alice.'"

"So it was an Alice then? How strange—I've never heard of one of those before."

"No, no Luttie, it wasn't _an_ Alice—it _was_ Alice." Luttie was still for a moment.

"Like me? Like I'm Luttie?" Her voice came out very tiny and small, from somewhere inside, deep in the heart of the matter. The Hatter couldn't see her face, for her head was bowed and her face was further obscured by her voluminous red hair, which alone added a good four inches to her petite frame. But her hands gripped tight her knitting needles. It was a black shawl she was knitting, and it was black she wore, an old, stiff velvet dress, the skirt made capacious by its multitude of petticoats—and for a moment he wondered at it—but all he said was:

"Yes, like you are Luttie. It is Alice. But say—isn't there that maid what's-'er-face—who we couldn't call 'Maid,' because that would be degrading? So she said to be called—oh, it started with an 'M'—"

"Mary Ann," Luttie supplied for him. "She came to me last week, asking to be let out. So I am the last one left who does not go by title, not even little bit. Even of you all is known of is the Hatter—although the Hare probably knows something more than that, given your long acquaintance with him. Everybody has to have had a name at some point in their lives. Plus, what could they call me—the Jabberwock? That is hardly appropriate, seeing that he is dead. And since I am from his heart, and am, per the Cat's information, the Bandersnatch, the Queen did not—and does not—own me—for one cannot fully own a heart—so she could not banish me as completely as she would have liked. Although it was complete enough for me.

"So yes, Hatter"—and here she looked him square in the eye—"I will take you outside, if that is what you wish. It is the one service I can perform now, and I intend to do my best."

He let out a breath, wuffling in the stillness. "I have not decided on that part yet—but let me tell you first what has happened. You will need to know, once people start coming to you in droves. The creature came in, bungled through people's everyday lives—she even made a fool out Missus Red. The White Queen met her, too, but she's as insane as the rest of us, so she really didn't mind."

"What'd this . . . Alice—what'd she do to the Queen, to get her so angry?"

The Hatter chuckled, and for the first time he looked a bit like the old hatter who spent all his time at the tea table among unwashed dishes and cutlery. He leaned forward and whispered, "The fool creature shook her. Then it disappeared, cool as you please. That thing sure has some nerve—gotta admire that in a girl, no matter how small she is in stature. You've heard about the beheading of the Queen of Hearts nigh six months ago—don't look so surprised, I know that Cat tells you everything—that's why it's a bit surprising it didn't tell you 'bout Alice; of course, Alice _is_ a bit of a tabooed subject." He took another sip of tea. "This really is an excellent blend."

Luttie just looked at him.

"Right," he sighed. "Well, this Alice came in the first time—"

"She found her way in twice?" Luttie exclaimed.

"Interrupting people is bad manners," he said sternly, but she knew he didn't really mind by the way he kept on taking small sips of the herbal brew. "Yes, the creature came in for the first time discomfiting everybody. It frightened the Duchess, conversed with the Cat, ate some of the mushrooms—that of which is surprising because the Caterpillar is so very particular about his mushrooms (well, he _was_, back when he was the Caterpillar)—and talked the late queen out of beheading the Knave, rascal though we all know he is.

"Then she left again, there was the coup d'état with the Missus Red, and the chessboard took over in popularity. No more executions, which settled well with the general populace at large—now it's just banishment. The only problem is that Alice came in that second time—tenacious creature"—and Luttie knew from experience that that was a compliment in the Hatter's book—"gave a jolly bang to the chess pieces, almost covered the White King in ink, saw Nobody on the road, and took a Knight out of his proper position." The Hatter shook his head admiringly. "And I thought I bungled things up with that Incident—I'm still waiting to see what I did. They threw me into jail, you know, before I ever did the crime. Strange people are the chess-pieces; they do everything backwards, almost as if they were a reflection. Which leads me to wonder if the Red Queen is just a reflection of our dear ol' big-headed Queen of Hearts—maybe she'll start beheading people, too—although, considering the evidence to the contrary I rather much doubt it." He smiled a bit.

"But why, Hatter," Luttie said with extreme patience, "have you been exiled?"

"Hm? Oh, for consorting with the creature, of course. A lot of the populace has, so expect banished Wonderlandians coming your way. Apparently the new queen thinks this is more humane than beheading them. But March and I"—and here he was able to look a little proud, despite the pitiful state he was in—"consorted with it thrice, acting as mad as you please to boot—which is more than anyone around here has done—even the Cat hasn't managed to do that yet."

"Why isn't March banished with you then?"

"_Someone_ has to man the table—and the Dormouse can't do that, since he's normally half-drowned in the teapot anyways," he said. "And besides, they caught me first."

Luttie sighed, but smiled. "You really do have a sunny disposition."

The Hatter looked pleased. "_Reeal_-ly," he drawled, doing a bad cowboy impersonation.

"Really," Luttie said firmly. "Now let's get you out of those wet things. You're absolutely soaked. Do you have a change of clothes in the hat? I"—then she noticed for the first time what, exactly, was missing and she stopped, appalled. There was a moment of silence as she looked at him, and he looked at her, and sipped his tea, before she found her voice; and even then it was just one word that croaked out past a dry throat. "Hat?" was all she was able to manage.

"Hat," the Hatter mused. "Hat. I lost the hat."

"But that hat has your whole entire life in its folds! How can you even say that you lost it?"

"I. Lost it." And it was as simple as that.


	3. Stability Point

_Stability Point_

She set him up in the guest bedroom, which had been hastily created to accommodate the new guest from a bundle of string and cobwebs. Simple tricks, really, but it did take a few tries to get the knack of it again—it had been so long since she had knitted together a new room for anyone, let alone being that the new guest was the Hatter.

Luttie was an expert at knitting—it came with having the extra long fingers, finely boned and tooled so that her hands were nimble and light with anything she did. It came from what she was, what her predecessor had been—that infamous creature of manxome heraldry. It was her trade, just as the Hatter's was millinery and haberdashery, specifically in the case of hats, bonnets, and the like; or the way the White Rabbit's was dealing in all sorts of mail and messages, constantly scurrying about with notes and memos tucked away inside his poor, white-crowned head to regale to the denizens of Wonderland. They all had certain jobs, each his niche and proper place. Officially, in the Royal Records, Luttie was known as the Weaver—for, indeed, as she had already pointed out, they could not call her Bandersnatch, although that _was_ what she was—but Weaver was not a title she would conform to, nor would she answer to anything but Luttie.

She was Luttie.

Right now Luttie sat in her rocking chair by the low-banked fire, the curved feet once again rhythmically grinding the floor, back, and forward again, back, and forward. She was knitting the Hatter a scarf. He would need it, where he was going. She already knew his decision, although he hadn't said anything to her about it yet. The Hatter would go to the outside because there was no place else for him to go.

Luttie caught herself whistling the oft-noticed tune that the Cat had cooked up in honor of her predecessor, from which she had been begotten. She sighed a bit, rather—one did get tired of the song, even when it was wound into every fiber and molecule of oneself—but she kept up the wandering tune anyway, because now it was part of the scarf, just as much as everything else that had been woven in, and one could not break the pattern when knitting something, otherwise everything would fall to ruin. The song was the one stability point in her life, which had been with her since the very beginning—

_'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves_

_Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;_

_All mimsy were the borogroves,_

_And the mome raths outgrabe._

When she awoke for the first time she was in a forest. Of course, at first she couldn't tell that either because a globe of half-moon filled her field of vision. Oddly enough this moon appeared to have very sharp teeth, and there were so a great deal many of them. Then the moon receded, gained shockingly aubergine ears and those curled eyes, which winked at her in the sun like two gold coins. The cat kneaded the base of her throat; its ample girth pressed against the rest of her upper torso as it purred, "Excellent—ex-act-a-ly what I'd hoped for."

It leaned down, sniffed her face, whiskers tickling her skin and making her nose itch. "You have handsome eyes—but it will make things a bittie obvious, in the long of things. Everyone will know what you are, soon enough. That will make things much more comp-lia-cated. The populace didn't like it very much—no siree they didn't—which is why they sent him to disss-patch it."

"And what, exactly, am I?" she said. Oddly enough, she did not find it at all odd that she was conversing with a cat, nor that the cat was conversing back. Nor did she find it odd that she knew things: that she knew that the sweet song twittering above her head was made by a borogrove, or that she was in the Tulgey Wood, or that she was a woman, although not—exactly—human.

The cat smiled at her. "I am the Cheshire Cat," it said by way of answer, "and you are the Jabberwock—or, I should say, what's left of him. You are his heart. Or, as some might say: the Bandersnatch. Or, as others might say: a bit of a frumious oddity. I wonder what they will call you." It seemed vaguely amused by this prospect; the corners of its mouth curled wider. "This is decisively interesting—much more than I had an-ticia-pated."

"I am Luttie," Luttie said—and then she wondered how, exactly, she knew that.

"Loooot-e?" It drew out the "o" sounding vowel. "Not _the_ Luttie, then?" the Cat added.

"No. Just Luttie."

"Interesting," it said before blinking out of sight. Luttie blinked, too, before sitting up.

"It disappeared," she said. Halfway expecting it to come back she waited for a few moments. When it became apparent that the Cheshire Cat wasn't going to come back anytime soon she stood, brushed her fine-boned hands at the stiff black folds of her dress. She was under an oddly shaped tree, which looked as if it had been placed upside down and thoroughly shaken—enough that its bark stood white and the leaves were gathered at the base like some great, hulking mass of hillock made entirely out of scrubby brush. Luttie rather liked the tree; it had a sense of familiarity without being too personal.

"Second chorus," the Cheshire Cat began delicately, as it appeared on one of the tum-tum tree's branches. Going out onto a thinly dressed limb, it settled its impressive girth down, tail still appearing in the air behind it stripe by stripe. "'Twas bril-_lig_, and the slithy toves, did _gyre_ and _gimble_ in the wabe; all mim-_sy_ were the boro-_groves_, and the mome raths out-_grabe_," it sang, grinning at her all the while in that self-satisfied way it had. "That's the song, you know," it added. "There is more to it, but I can't—quite—seem to remember the rest. Hmm. Strange."

It disappeared again with a sudden pop. Luttie looked about her, only to spot its head a few yards off in another tree. "Then again," the Cat called, "it is not ex-actially that strange. For indeed"—and its smile was at her feet, now, grinning up at her. The eyes appeared next, two gold moons which whirled up at her, then the ears, and finally the rest of it with a sudden jolt of proper mass and solid furry wedge. The Cat leaped up into her arms; she caught it just in time. It settled down, getting comfortable, bottle-brush tail powdering her nose with purple cat hair—"for indeed," it said, as though no interruption had ever occurred, "we are all quite mad here." This startling announcement was said quite serenely.

"Indeed," Luttie replied gravely. "Imagination quite seems to have been allowed to run amok through the streets, here. It's quite nice, in my opinion; not at all stifling. Not at all like—" And here Luttie paused, for she could not think of what it was _not_ like, which bothered her.

"I like you," the Cat said. "Cat's don't like a very many people, but here you are, agreeing with me. That does not happen ordinarily."

Luttie was rather flattered. No one—not that she could remember, anyways—had ever said that they'd liked her specifically before.

"Thank you," she said. "But I ask: where is 'here,' exactly?"

The Cheshire Cat grinned at her and vanished. "In _that_ direction," came its disembodied voice, "lives the Mad Hatter, and in _that_ direction lives the March Hare. Visit whomever you like; it makes no difference to me. But I would suggest," it said from, surprisingly, above her. Luttie looked up to find its head smiling at her from the naked canopy of trees: "I would suggest you visit one or the other. It will get the ball rolling. And," it added, "they will be able to tell you where 'here' is. For, you see, I seem to be neither here nor there these days." As if to prove its point the Cat's body appeared on the branch beside its head; picking it up, the Cat popped its head back onto its torso. It laughed. "So you see? Ask the Hatter"—and its head was in its right paw—"or the Hare"—and now it was in its left— "for although they are mad they are much more here." Then it vanished again.

Luttie waited a bit, to see if the Cat would come back or not (after all it had before.) But when it didn't she went off in the general direction the Cat had pointed out to her, with its exchanging of heads. "For, after all," she told herself, "someone who is mad will be more likely to tell me what this place is, if everyone here is truly mad, as the Cat has pointed out. The Mad Hatter should know the terrain much better than the March Hare."

So she went, with the birds all singing in the trees, a-twittering away; presently she came to a small white gate, neatly lined with smart bushes of a distinct blue variety; and she stepped up to the cobbled pathway, which had originated abruptly a few feet away from the gate. Luttie unlatched the latch, which was a little brass thing all nailed to the painted wood—she had time to admire the heart ensorcelled into the middle of the gate, a petite thing of simple workmanship—_Someone here has good taste_, she thought—and then she was in the Mad Hatter's front walk, with orange roses, fire embroidered by thorns; bluebells, a mid-noon sort of color, banked by light spring-green leaves; and many more flowers besides which she did not have a name to. The flowers were all together in a delightful mess—and a few of them said "Hello" in that type of voice that comes with being garlanded in the rainbow and bejeweled in morning-dew—a bit snobbish, really, which is how, it seemed from limited experience, all flowers behaved when you had the chance to talk to them.

Luttie said to the man sitting on the front step: "That is exactly the way I'd have my garden—all together like that, with no borders or tucked away all neat and tidy-like—you know, if I actually had a garden."

The first thing she had noticed about him was the cup of tea he held in his hands. That lone white cup, miniature in proportions compared to the tall, lanky man before her, whose hands seemed to be a mite too big for the rest of him, spoke volumes about he who held it—more so than his garishly over-bright clothes, which were, if she did say so herself, a bit scandalous, all over leather and tight-fitting pants and boots which were tied off at the knee with bright green ribbon and a hat that was twice the size of proper use—well, that tea-cup, a color of clotted-cream left out on the windowsill to chill on a cold winter's night, with the rime covering the thick cream in a thin layer of ice, made Luttie trust the Hatter instantly. More so than his thin, thoughtful face, with its scattering of symmetrical freckles, or his pale blue eyes, which now viewed she-who-stood-on-his-front-walk with naked surprise.

He, in turn, studied her with equal frankness. She had the voluminous red hair of the colleens in Éire, curly and coppered colored, like a newly minted penny. She had a hazel-gold eye and one so black that no pupil was apparently visible; it gave her a slightly cracked look, but her face was sweet and young. When she smiled at him hesitantly her teeth were slightly crooked. It was the eyes that gave her away, really, for what she was, and the fingers, which were just long enough to be noticed as abnormal.

Luttie blushed under the Hatter's curious appraisal. Feeling an inexplicable need to explain herself to this man, she added, "I'm Luttie."

The Hatter set his tea cup down on the front porch beside him, taking careful care to not crack the china. "Hm. Not _the_ Luttie, then?" he said.

"No," she said, privately wondering if this was a question that would come up in all conversation. "Just Luttie."

"Well then," he said. He looked her right in the eyes, and by that simple gesture she knew that he knew what, exactly, she was, and that it did not perturb him in the least. And then she wondered: Why in the world was being a Bandersnatch a bad thing? And how did she know that it _was_ something to be shunned? Luttie wasn't sure; all she knew was that she did. "Well met, not-the Luttie." And the Hatter smiled.

For a moment they just stood there _smiling_ at each other, and Luttie had to wonder: was smiling the social custom?

"It is time for tea," he announced suddenly, hopping up from his seat with apparent excitement.

Taking Luttie by the arm, he escorted her out of the garden—a few of the flowers waved at her as they went—and took her to the next-door-neighbor's, who always wore a waistcoat and a bowtie even though he was not (exactly) human and who, in the course of his life, had managed to collect a large dining table, which he had then laid out with all the trimmings of an afternoon's tea.


	4. Turning Over

_Turning Over_

When the Mad Hatter awoke in the morning the small breakfast table was set for two in the kitchenette. He seemed pleased by the whole affair of bread-and-butter and tea. "I'm sorry it couldn't be more; I don't eat all that much," Luttie said.

The Hatter, his mouth thick with a slice of toast oozing with butter, shot her a look. He swallowed thickly, washed it down with a gulp of tea, before saying, "It is more than our standard fare, at the table."

"True. I hadn't thought of it." A moment of silence, in which Luttie studied her companion: he looked like he hadn't slept well, with circles shading the undersides of his eyes. Of course, all hatters never slept well. There was no reason to worry about him. Except of course there _was_ something to worry about, because he was _banished_. Desperately fishing about for something that wouldn't remind the Hatter of being banished, Luttie finally said, "I was thinking, last night, of when we first met—remember?"

The Hatter's mouth curled upward at the corners, which had been her intent. He did have, for all his oddities, a very nice smile. This alone was one of the few bare facts that Luttie would admit to herself about herself and the Hatter. Well, that and the fact that she'd given him a doorknob—which Luttie didn't hand out to just _any_ Tom, Dick, or Jane who walked by.

"Yes," the Hatter said by way of return. "You complimented me on the garden then promptly told me your name was Luttie—in reverse order from what is normally done, I might add. Then again, I've done things in the reverse order most of my life—it's become sort of a hobby, you might say. I like having hobbies; it gives one a sort of well-rounded feeling, somehow."

"Agreed," she said.

There was a moment of silence, bled only by the quiet tick-tick of the clock on the wall. The Carpenter had given her that clock after she'd knitted him a net—Luttie hadn't asked what it was for, nor had he offered information. She had heard from the Tweedles, however, that he and the Walrus had started some crack-brained scheme to capture oysters—not that any oysters, mind you, grew in the Sea of Tears, which had mysteriously shown up a year ago.

Luttie had to wonder if that Alice had anything to do with it.

"Hatter," she said, still looking at the clock, "did Alice make the Sea of Tears—you know, the one that appeared by the racetrack?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Luttie considered the ramifications of this for a moment or two. Then she sipped a bit of tea from the porcelain cup by her elbow. The she said: "I made you something—for when you go." The Hatter refused to meet her eyes at this; instead he assiduously studied the dregs in his tea cup, as though he'd never seen such a thing before. "Hatter," she added gently, "there's no place else for you to go."

He leaned back into the chair, which was a tiny thing, really; it creaked under the unaccustomed weight of a man full-grown. The Hatter's sigh spoke a full paragraph. "I know," he said.

There was a moment of silence.

"Shouldn't the White King be able to grant you political asylum? You are, after all, one of his couriers."

"No." That was all he said, but the way he said it assured Luttie not to pry as into _why_ the White King could not—or would not—grant the Hatter asylum.

"Oh," she said. This time the silence was awkward, filled with unspoken questions. Luttie could tell that the Hatter did not want to talk about whatever-it-was—once again the twist of his mouth betrayed him—and she figured that she could always ask the Hare for information later, if she really had to.

Slightly mollified by this thought, and thinking to break the silence, she inconspicuously pulled out from one of her many pockets, which had been stitched and hemmed into the folds of her dress, the package she had prepared the night before. "It's nothing much," Luttie said. She placed it by the Hatter's elbow on the table. "Just a scarf—you won't know what the weather is like until you get there—and, well, I thought you might need it." She betrayed herself by blushing, which irritated her to no end; Luttie was grateful indeed that the Hatter was busy untwining the black ribbon which wound around the wrapped package; he couldn't study her face that way and note the red-stain besmirching her cheeks.

The Hatter unwound the ribbon which held the wrapping in place, the brown paper which had been used to wrap the present falling away. The wrapping paper was leftover paper bags from the grocer's; the word Grocer's was still visible on the inside of the paper when it was stripped away under the Hatter's fine-boned fingers, which shook just a bit—but palsy was just something which came with being a hatter; that was understood.

The scarf, when it was revealed naked to the light of Luttie's kitchen, fell languid, thick and heavy, over the Hatter's hands, concealing them in linked ropes of dense black; the red of Luttie's hair, and the thin gold threads of the song, were barely visible in the knitted wool, which seemed to suck in the surrounding light, somehow, making the scarf seem less dark than it really was; Luttie hadn't realized before how black a skein she had used. And when the Hatter didn't say anything, just stared at the thick, coiled thing in his hands: "I hope you like it." She whispered this, feeling unexpectedly shy. "See, look."

Reaching out, she lightly touched the wool. "The gold is the song and the blue thread, tucked away here—where it's the color of the cupping firmament of the sky on an autumn's day; y'know, when everything is perfectly poised and balanced—that's the thread I got when I thought of the table, and the afternoons spent there." Luttie did not bother pointing out the flashes of red, buried deep in the dark mass—that, more than anything else, was what would protect him. For Luttie was the thing most tied to Wonderland, over everything else; she was the only thing that did not exist outside of it, between the pages of a book created by an anagram.

"It will protect you," she finished with a mumble. "Help to keep you from forgetting us—since you are not taking the hat with you."

"Yes," he said. "I am not taking the hat with me." He looked at her. "It is a very beautiful present"—although he inwardly reflected that it would have been nice to have it in a different color—a nice lime green, perhaps. "Thank you."

"Oh—I am ever so glad you like it!" And then, with Luttie smiling at him, with the morning sunlight pressing up against her hair and shadowing her left cheek in dazzling rays, glancing off her golden eye and coiling in eddying pools against the curve of her lips, the Hatter's heart turned over once.

He realized something that had never before been considered, not by anyone—and certainly not by him, bachelor as he was. The Hatter had always said that his one true love was tea, and that that would be enough to get him through life, thank you very much; but now, as Luttie pressed one of her bird-thin hands to his sleeve, her touch light and cool, felt even through the barrier of jacket and shirt, the Hatter considered and blushed, just a little bit. Quickly, before she could have time to catch this newfound knowledge in his eyes, he turned away; and, just as quickly as the thought had arose, he buried it; it was still there, though, and resurfaced when he looked at Luttie again, who, unaware of the internal struggle, said, "I'll miss you."

"And I you." Yet the Hatter was only beginning to realize just exactly how much he'd miss her.


	5. Party Invitation

_Party Invitation_

"Now watch," the Hatter said.

That afternoon, the teakettles, when they could get away with it, waltzed round the table, while the Dormouse shed hair into the best tea—a sweet herbal blend of similar manner as to that of the sea: a bit salty but with a surprising sweet aftertaste despite all. The sunlight, thin, slanting rays thick in their near invisibility, pressed down against hair and cloth and skin, blending purple against white tablecloth—albeit slightly smudged white tablecloth, from not near enough washing—through the play of illumination and shadow. The March Hare, sitting on a specially tailored stool that was high enough so he could actually rest his elbows on the table with ease, reached across the table for a tarty-tart; arms being too short, he was left with one foot pressed against the stool-back, leaning heavily on the table with one arm, and fumbling for the delightful pastry a few inches shy of the goal with the other.

Luttie, averted for the moment from the Hatter, inconspicuously—so that the Hare wouldn't notice; he really was so particular about his height—nudged the plate closer to him with a gentle urging of her hand. Chortling, thinking that it was all his doing somehow, the Hare shoved one tarty-tart into his mouth and grabbed another two before sitting down with a plop back into his chair. "Go on," he urged, "tell her the story. We haven't all day. Before the mome raths come out."

Smiling just a bit—for, in fact, they precisely did have all day, one long, golden afternoon—Luttie turned back to the Hatter, who caught her eye with a wink. She was sure he'd seen what she'd done for the Hare, and approved, although it was hard to tell with the Mad Hatter sometimes; he could be thinking one thing entirely different than what his expression showed.

"Muchness," the Dormouse mumbled from somewhere along the nethermost regions of the table. "Much of Muchness, all they drew."

"Much of Muchness indeed," the haberdasher said gravely to the sleeping mouse in question, who replied with nothing more than a snort, the kind one makes when one has too much tea and is sleeping it off in a teapot. "Now," turning back to Luttie with a smile, "watch."

He reached into the hat, one gloved hand pressing, lightly but firmly, against the brim of the hat as he held it steady. Luttie watched fervently as the Hatter then _pulled_ and threw up into the air shadows, which cast light about like the substance of which they were made.

This was the story they told:

_An old house once stood where a forest is now. The man who owned the house was of respectable nature and had never done a thing out of order, every "I" dotted and every "T" crossed. He had two sons of marriageable age. The sons were both cunning and smart, with high I.Q's. One was a lawyer—he had memorized the town newspaper, back to front, for the last three years running, as well as the Complete Latin Dictionary. The other was a politician, running along neck-to-neck with all the other guild masters—he knew all of the Laws of Guildery, even the ones that the guild masters had never even heard of before. He also considered himself a bit of an artist because he embroidered his own suspenders._

_Since they were both of marriageable age, and had—in their minds—considerable wit and charm, they both decided to pursue the kingdom's princess. This they ventured to do because the princess had petitioned that the man she would marry would be the one who spoke with the most wit. Each felt he had a fighting chance, even though they only had a week to prepare their witticisms; each said "I'll be the one to win the princess!"_

_Each was given a horse by his father—the politician a horse of ebony; the lawyer, one as white as milk. Both oiled their jaws with cod liver oil to be able to speak faster than usual—it loosened up the joints. Then they were ready to depart. Yet before they could do so the youngest brother burst out of the house. You see, he was not really considered a part of the family. That is why he hadn't been mentioned before now. He wasn't a scholar at all, not like the other two, and that is why they called him Clod Hans._

_"Where are you going? All dressed up—where you are going?" shouted Clod Hans. Then, with a grin, he added, "Going where thou art?"_

_"To the king's castle. Where have you been, that you haven't heard the news—under a rock? One of us is going to go marry the princess." The brother's tone added the "and you're not invited" part._

_"Whoever speaks the most wittily," the other brother added, "will win the hand of the princess." _His_ voice added the "duh" part._

_"Well I'll be!" Clod Hans declared, choosing to ignore his brothers' antagonism. "Goodness—I'm going too!" They merely laughed and rode off._

_"Father!" he cried, whirling around, and in his enthusiasm nearly tripping over his own two feet. "Father, give me a horse! I've just decided to go get married, and I have to go meet my new bride right away. If she'll have me, all well and good; if she won't have me then I'll have her!" This, to Clod Hans' mind, solved both sides of the puzzle._

_"Ridiculous!" said the father. "You will not be given a horse; you can't speak well; you have no wit. You, win the hand of the princess? Why, you're not even presentable!" This was true, for Clod Hans was besmeared in ink—he was writing a book, you see—but he didn't care. He also decided to ignore the "you idiot" that was implied by his father's tone._

_"Well, if you won't give me a horse," laughed Clod Hans, "then I will take the billy goat—it is rightfully mine and I can ride it." Taking the billy goat out of the shed, he leaped onto its back; digging his heels into its sides away he rode. The goat went as fast it could and Clod Hans sang and shouted as loud as he could—trying, at various intervals, to sing opera as the mood struck him—and (for all that he was a writer) caring not a whit about how the words might sound, falling from his mouth and tripping over themselves in their haste to get free: "Here am I, here am I!"_

_Meanwhile, his two brothers said not a word to each other. Each was busy contemplating what he would say to the princess when he met her. They rode so morosely that one would think they were attending a funeral, instead of going to meet their prospective bride-to-be._

_Up rode Clod Hans. "Hello! Hell-o-leo!" he screamed. "Here am I! Look it—look it, look—look at what I found in the middle of the road!" And he held up a dead crow for them to, presumably, look at._

_One of the brothers swore; both then veered as far away from their brother as they could get. "Clod!" they said. "What in the world are you going to do with that?"_

_Hans looked at his two brothers as though _they_ were the supposed stupid ones. Wasn't it _obvious_? "It's a gift for the princess."_

_At that his brothers laughed. "You do just that!" they said—then picked up their pace a little, so that now they no longer looked like funeral-attendees. After all, their brother wasn't presentable; it wouldn't do to be seen with him._

_Hans, though, was still only a few feet behind—his billy goat was a tenacious little thing. "Here I am, hello, hello! This magnificent treasure—worth a king's ransom, one would think—it's not every day you'd find one of _these_!"_

_Both brothers turned in their saddles to see what their little brother had procured now. "Clod! Stupid—that's a wooden shoe."_

_"A broken wooden shoe, to top it off," the other sneered. "What're you going to do—give it to the princess?"_

_"Certainly I will," Hans declared, while his brothers laughed and spurred their horses into a slight canter._

_"I am here! I am here—hello, hello!" screamed Clod Hans a little while later. "It's marvel-o-lious, just look!"_

_"What is it you've found now?" they asked._

_"It's the most beautiful thing in the world," sighed Hans. "Can't you imagine how pleased the princess will be?"_

_"Idiot," the politician said, and his brother had to agree. It was mud—the fine, slippery kind that smooshes between your toes when you walk barefoot through it—and Clod Hans had filled his pockets with the best of the best._

_Getting annoyed with Clod, the two brothers did not laugh, but spurred their horses on into a gallop. By the time they had reached the castle gates they were a whole hour ahead of Clod Hans. Now, the princess had many suitors; since there were so many they were each given a number and told to wait in line. They would have torn each other's eyes out, if they'd had the chance, because the other had gotten there before them; but they stood so close together that moving their arms was quite impossible—this was, naturally, a good thing, for tearing out the others eyes is not a pleasant way to make another's acquaintance, no matter what the circumstance._

_Each and every time one of the princess's suitors entered the room, all the witty things would fly right out of their heads—for they could feel the curious eyes of the townspeople pressing down on them from the peeping windows as well as those of the three scribes and the alderman, who wrote down everything that was said so that it could be written on the city newspaper that very afternoon for twopence. Plus, the floor creaked when you walked upon it, and the ceiling was an enormous mirror that reflected everything upside down—which, to most, is very disconcerting. Each and every one of them would lose their tongues, and would stammer and mutter._

_"No good!" said the princess every time. "Out!"_

_"It's hot in here!" said the unhappy suitor. Indeed, it was the eldest brother himself; but all of the witty things he was going to say had flown right out of his head, and he couldn't think of a single word in the Latin Dictionary to expound upon._

_"Yes, it is," said the princess. "That is because my father is roasting roosters today."_

_"Bah!" That wasn't what he'd expected himself to say at all; poor man! all he could do was stand there with his mouth open. He strove for something—anything!—that was witty but he could think of nothing._

_"No good!" said the princess. "Out!"_

_Out he was booted. Now in the second brother came._

_"I say," he said, adjusting his spectacles nervously, "it is so very, very terribly hot in here": and he looked around in vain for a cool breeze to comfort him._

_"Yes, we are roasting roosters," said the princess._

_"Err—What did—What?" stuttered the poor man; all the scribes wrote dutifully down: "Err—What did—what?"_

_"No good!" said the princess. "Out!"_

_So things proceeded until in came Clod Hans. First came the small clipping of hooves against marble; then came the billy goat into view itself, with its master on its back. He rode that billy goat right into the royal hall, until it stopped at the princess' feet. He got off its back and gave her a long and searching look. _

_Then he smiled._

_"Goodness me—hot in here it very well is," he said._

_"That's because I'm roasting roosters today," said the princess._

_Hans made a show of looking relieved. "Oh, that is good," he said. "Mayhap I could get my crow fried as well."_

_The princess could feel her face beginning to crack into a smile. "That might very well be possible," she said. "But do you have anything to fry it in? All our pots and pans are in use."_

_"Sure do I," said Clod Hans, holding up the broken shoe for inspection. At that the princess giggled. "Will this suffice for a pot?" and he dropped the crow into the broken shoe._

_"Splendid! It is enough for a meal. But, tell me: have you any gravy? Everybody knows that fried crow is nothing without gravy."_

_"Pockets full, my dear child! Pockets full—so much so I have some to spare!" And Clod Hans showed her the mud._

_"That is what I like!" exclaimed the princess. "Somebody who can speak up for himself. I very well think I will marry you! But do you know that every word we have said has been written down and will be printed in the newspaper? At one of the windows stands three scribes and an old alderman, and he is the worst. He doesn't understand a word of what anyone says, and always writes things down wrong." The princess said this to frighten Clod Hans—or to test his courage, which seems to very much be the same thing sometimes—and the scribes neighed like horses and shook their pens, so blots of ink sprayed to the floor._

_"Well—well-o-lio—if the alderman is the most important of the lot then he deserves the best!" shouted Clod Hans, and took all the mud out of his pockets and threw it in the old man's face._

_"Nobly—nobly done!" said the princess. "I couldn't have done it, but I am sure I will learn how!" Then she laughed._

_Clod Hans married his bride-to-be and became king. He sat on a throne with a crown on his head. I got this story straight out of the alderman's newspaper and that cannot be trusted._

At the end of it all Luttie laughed, like the princess in the story had—head thrown back and caring not a whit if anyone saw her teeth. The Hatter, pleased with her response, sat back into his chair, twirling the hat around in his hands in a show of nonchalance. March leaned back into his chair too and whistled between his teeth. "Crumpets," he said. "I'd like to applaud, but then you'll get a bigger head than the one you already possess."

The Hatter could afford to be gracious. "Stuff it," he said, before taking another sip of tea. All was silent for a moment—a gloriously golden silence, all rounded and mellow and yellow-butter slowly melting from the noon's heat.

There was a creak at March's gate; the Hatter, surprised, threw all four legs down of his chair down onto the table with a thump—he had previously been tilting—while Luttie half-turned awkwardly and covered her eyes with her long, long fingers and the bird-thinness of her hands. The Hare was the only one unperturbed; he regarded his cousin—twice removed on his mother's aunt's step-cousin's side, to be exact—at the garden-gate and said amiably, "What-ho, Rabbit! Care for any tea?"

The Rabbit bounced through the gate, hands nervously hovering over his pocket; there was a noticeable bulge in it, with a finely tooled gold chain dangling out the upper lip to only then attach to the corner of his waistcoat. Luttie studied him out of the corner of her eye; was he protecting his _pocket watch_? For a moment she doubted his seeming sanity, which was expressed in his sharply pressed red jacket and yellow-plaid waistcoat; then she noted the Hatter, who, having apparently recovered from his surprise, was blowing bubbles into his tea by way of a striped, plastic-e tubular object.

Right: sanity was not necessarily relative in Wonderland. Sanity, in Wonderland, couldn't be measured by degrees, not like it was in other places; Luttie knew this as well as anyone. The sanest person was a talking cat who vanished into midair when in conversation—it was only the sane people who were willing to admit that they were crazy. The mad people always insisted that they were fine.

"No, no tea," the Rabbit said, twitching back nervously when the Hatter lunged forward, his chair legs thudding onto the ground.

"Bah!" he cried. "Blasphemy!"

The Rabbit looked positively terrified at this. Nervously taking a hop back, he reached into the inside of his jacket. Out came a bundle of pale white envelopes clasped in an even whiter hand; Luttie, staring openly now, could tell they were of the expensive variety, made of thick parchment. They trembled in his hands.

"Hatter," she murmured reproachfully, "you're scaring him."

The Rabbit glanced over at her, face paling even further at the sight of her eyes and of her long, long, fine-boned fingers. Luttie sighed, lowered her fingers into her lap, and twisted them nervously. She was used to such reactions, for her predecessor _had_ been infamously terrible, but that fact still didn't stop the scrutiny from being uncomfortable.

She averted her eyes from him, and after a moment she thought she heard him mutter, "Brillig—_absolutely brillig_." Luttie frowned at the word choice, but she didn't say anything. Brillig, when used in such a context, was _extremely_ rude.

The Hare, on the other hand, had no such qualms about speaking his mind. "Birt, _really_. Luttie is a guest." He thumped the side of the stool with his foot for added emphasis.

The Rabbit colored but said only, "I've brought invitations from Her Royal Majesty, Par Excellence, Ruler of the Four Corners of Wonder and out to the Unknown Edges, the Queen of Hearts," and placed two of the envelopes on the table. All four of the table's occupants leaned in to stare at the pale, cream-colored papers.

"Very official looking," the Hatter remarked. He picked one of the invitations up, staining the corner purple from the jam he still had on his fingers. The Rabbit flinched at the sight of disorder. "Whatever do you suppose it's for—besides being just an invitation?" He broke the wax seal and unfolded the parchment. After a few moments of reading: "Ah."

And then: "Hm."

"What does it say?" Luttie asked him, wide-eyed.

"Go ahead," the Hatter said carelessly, tossing the invite on the table. While Luttie picked it up, he said to the Rabbit, "I assume it's more royal command than actual invitational choice."

"Naturally."

The lettering was in a thin red leaf, and in certain slants of light looked to be gold. The parchment was thick and heavy, as she'd already suspected, and the wax seal was bloody red, with an equally bloody red rose stamped in the center: the Queen's signet.

_You are hereby and forthwith and such-and-such invited to attend Her Most Illustriousness's Grand and Royal Concert, of which some may take a part in while others may not. It all depends on the weather, I should think. Be there promptly at six o'clock and forget not to wear red. It helps. Throw something flowery up there—no scratch that, the Queen wants explosions. _She _says that everybody likes good explosions, especially of color. _

Here there was a giant ink blot arching out over half the page in the finest cherry red. Then, very near the bottom, in hastily scrawled letters:

_Don't forget to pick up the cabbage for tonight's supper, and perhaps some goose quills for the center piece. Have _got_ to remind the Butler to clean the drapes while he's at it; nobody likes dirty drapes. The Duchess is so very particular about drapery, and I'm sure she'd notice._

_Flour_

_Milk_

_Cabbages_

_Eggs_

_Alarm clock_

Luttie glanced up, brow furrowed. "Why'd they send us the grocery list?" she said.

That was the first time she could remember the Rabbit laughing. True, it was a nervous, guilty, hiccupping sort of laugh, stilted in the worst way, with much of the wringing of the ears, but it _was_ a laugh.

_Maybe, _she thought_, he's not as bad as first would be surmised. _

Maybe the attitude really was for show, and only put out upon because he was frightened.

Maybe.

But then the question remained: what did the Rabbit have to be frightened about? Luttie knew nothing of Court and Politics; she had been kept naively innocent of them, though whether through accident or actual intent it was hard to say. So she still figured the Queen to be some sort of beneficiary to the people—a bit of an Elizabeth, say, with the jewels and the crowns and the wigs. Of course the actuality was as far from tea in China as you could possibly get, but Luttie did not know that.

Not yet.

"Hatter," she said, turning to the haberdasher in question, "they did send us the grocery list, did they not? I'm not imagining things."

And the Hatter grinned at her, a maniacal gleam in his eye. "Why yes, Luttie, I very do suppose they did send us the grocery list." He leaned back in his chair and gave a great bark of laughter, folding his hands over his stomach and clasping his fingers together. "Well-o-lio," he murmured; "I very well suppose they did."

All was silent for a moment. The Hare had just begun to pile the sugar cubes together in some semblance of a miniature castle—he wanted to see how many sugar cubes he could stack before they toppled over—and the White Rabbit was just beginning to edge out of the garden, hoping no one would notice or remember him, when the Hatter turned to Luttie and said: "Do you want to go?"

She blinked, startled. "What?"

"To the concert. Would you want to go?"

"Well yes—I mean, I suppose. Maybe. Why?"

"Hm," the Hatter said. He turned to the Hare. His sugar cube stack having toppled after the twentieth sugar cube, the Hare was staring down into his teacup looking morose. "March," the Hatter said, "what are you thinking?"

The Hare looked up and his nose twitched, startled to find itself the center of attention. The Hare was startled, too. "What do I think?" he said slowly.

"Yes—what do you think?"

"What do I think?" He glanced down into his teacup, watched the rest of the tea leaves swirling in the dregs of the water. "I think the spoons have run away again."

"Hm," the Hatter said again. After a moment of silence he said thoughtfully, "That, old bean, is a very good consideration. We shall ponder."

And the Rabbit, taking advantage of the Hatter's preoccupation, fled down the walkway and off the March Hare's property, intending to never return unless commanded by his superiors in Court.

The Queen could chop off his head, you know.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Clod Hans (c) Hans Christian Anderson**; **retold by me. ~madis**


	6. Leave Taking

_Leave Taking_

They entered the house by the normal way, which was through the wall. The doorknob was what did the trick, really, as it always did; Luttie used her own, an austere thing made out of a reddish-gold sort of color.

She closed the door that had been made into the wall behind her, making sure to unlatch the doorknob from her own dwelling's walls—it wouldn't do to leave her mode of transportation at home. The Hatter, who had gone before her, said, "You've become practiced at this—much more so than at the concert."

Luttie made a face at the reminder then smiled a bit at the Hatter's confused look.

"It's my main mode of transportation," she said simply. "The Duke can't track me at this low level of teleportation—not like if I'd used a mirror."

Now it was the Hatter's turn to grimace at the mention of the Queen's counselor: first in service to the Queen of Hearts, then the Red Queen. Ruthless to the bone and out for every honorable Wonderlandian's blood.

"He _is_ a bit of a cold-blooded twerp, isn't he?"

Luttie smothered a very unladylike snort with her hand.

The Hatter winked at her.

They walked down the hallway, the Hatter brushing his gloved fingers against the wallpapered walls. It was a fine-boned house, with sturdy rafters and a white-with-blue trim painted on the outside. There were no crazy colors rioting amuck about the house: most everything was in a morose color scheme of a navy blue-green-gold and all layered in a fine coating of dust. In fact, it would have been hard to believe that the house was a part of Wonderland at all, so separate was it in seeming appearance from the rest of the country. It would have been more in place, Luttie supposed, with the _Curious Curios_ _Curiosity Shop_ in Wondertropolis, which was a huge warehouse that held all manner of things from Elsewhere and that seemed to have no particular use. Luttie knew from fact that the Hare loved to buy things from there—then he, of course, promptly forgot about them when he got them home. She highly suspected that was what had happened to the doorknobs and the knitting needles.

The only way one could know the house was in Wonderland at all, she supposed, was by the chess pieces in the parlor. The Hatter stopped short in the parlor doorway at the sight of them; or, she supposed, more importantly at the sight of the Red Queen barking orders from the armchair, which was a leather, wing backed thing that smelled of sandalwood. "Don't worry," she said to his pale face; "they can't see us."

"Really."

He really was frightened of the Red Queen, Luttie realized. Why? Was it not that her only capital punishment was banishment?

What could have made the Hatter so afraid?

"I think it has something to do with the fact that we're so big," she explained, "and that they're so small, and so it's just impossible for them to see us. They can't. I like coming here and watching them sometimes; it's how I learned of your arrest, you know." She tilted her head to one side. "Hm—I wonder why the White King isn't here."

The Hatter's mouth twisted, as though he had found a lump of unidentifiable unpleasantness floating in his tea.

Luttie considered him for a moment, too. Keep off the subject of the White King, then. For want of something to say, she said, "Have you done the crime yet? You know—the one that put you in jail?"

"No, not yet; I'm still wondering what it is." He stopped in front of the armchair, looked down at the Red Queen, and frowned. "I wonder what would happen if I stepped on her. She put me in jail, you know—it was not a very pleasant experience."

"Hatter."

He smiled, rather, at her shocked expression. "Hypothetically speaking."

"Well," Luttie said, a bit flustered by his smile. She walked up to the mantle and the mirror which was affixed to the wall above it. Not able to think of what to say, she said, "Here we are." She could feel the presence of the Hatter come up behind her, and the warmth of him, and thought she would cry.

Through a great effort of will she swallowed her tears and turned to him and said: "Have you thought of what you are going to be called? I do not know where the mirror is going to take you—although the portal always stays in the same city, it seems—so you'll have to have a pretty common name."

"A name?" The Hatter frowned, as though the matter perplexed him. He was standing very close, and Luttie took a step back, the better to see his face. Her back bumped into the mantle, the thick mass of her hair pressing against the mirror. "I have gone by title for such a long time," he said.

Then he smiled, but the smile was sad.

"I've quite forgotten what my mother called me," the Hatter added.

"I never had a mother."

"You can't miss what you never had."

The Hatter paused for a moment, as though considering. Luttie took the time to memorize his freckles and the blue of his eyes. It would be such a very long time before they saw one another again.

"I've rather always liked the name Reginald," the Hatter mused. "Reginald Banders."

Luttie wrinkled her nose.

He caught her look. "Yes, Reginald. It reminds me of tea with enough of a squeaky, lemony feel to be unique. And during garden parties and holidays I'll allow people to call me Reg—but only in impolite society, understand you."

"Will I be considered impolite society?"

"Luttie," the Hatter said, "you have always, always, _always _been considered impolite society."

At that she did cry tears which dribbled down from the corners of her eyes; but she turned away, so that the Hatter would not have to deal with them.

Luttie placed the doorknob on the mirror face, and twisted it and pulled it, as though she was opening a door. The portal opened, a rippling outwards of the glass; and now it could be dimly made out, as though through a glass pitcher filled with tea, the image of a city, with horse-drawn conveyances hurtling past at what seemed to be, to Luttie, a breakneck pace. It was a city with buildings which crowded the sky into dirty smoke, and she shuddered, to think of living in such a place. But, sometimes, beyond the colorless buildings with their empty windows there would be a flash of green hedges and hills, blue sky, and maybe a bit of yellow all mixed together in a landscape that was very much _there_, if not all that defined. And it was that bit of the barely glimpsed that Luttie found fascinating about going outside; and, she told herself, it really was to that she was sending the Hatter to. Really. He would find his way out of the city and into that bright bit of blue sky and green hedge. She hoped.

When she turned to him her face was free of tears, although her eyes were over-bright with repressed tears.

"Luttie," the Hatter said.

She sniffled. He caught a stray tear which threatened to spill over with his thumb. The salt stained his glove.

"I don't want you to go," Luttie said, feeling childish. "You're my friend."

"You have other friends—March especially; he always said that he considered you to be the long-lost distant cousin he never had."

"I thought the White Rabbit was the long-lost distant cousin?"

"Rightly so. But don't tell March that; you know how he so gets fixed onto those ideas of his. Remember the time with the flamingos?"

Luttie laughed, but it was a wet and unhappy one. She then stepped forward, and buried her head into his chest. Her hands clutched the lapels of his coat tightly. "But none of them are you. You won't be here."

All he could see of her was that fine red mass of hair; its voluminous waves completely obscured the rest of her petite features from view.

He'd always liked her hair.

At first the Hatter gingerly patted her on the head, but as her grip on his coat lapels tightened so did the emotion in his heart. He awkwardly put his arms around her, unused to such mannerisms; soon, though, his grip became wonderfully tight.

"I'll make sure to not forget you," he said. "And you'll make sure not to forget me. That way we'll always remember each other."

"Yes."

"And not forget."

"Yes."

Then he gently tilted her chin up with one gloved hand. Luttie's eyes were still over-bright. Her voice went a little jiggly when she said, "You make sure to wear that scarf I gave you."

"Yes," he said in his turn.

"Especially when it's cold out; can't have you catching a chill."

"Yes."

"Because—because—" and here her treacherous lower lip trembled, just a bit, and her heart was full of tender, half-impossible things which dared to peep, half hidden, from behind her eyes.

"Luttie," the Hatter sighed.

He leaned down, paused just a little bit, kissed her eyes as well as her mouth.

The Hatter was just a little gawkier than she had expected him to be, warm and wonderfully sweet. He was real and solid and tangible and wonderful. Her heart trembled and sighed.

He pulled away, threaded his fingers through her hair. Said, "I should go."

"Yes."

He kissed her again instead.

Luttie's fingers curled around the back of his collar, not wanting to ever let go. _Why couldn't it stay like this always?_ she thought fiercely. _Why couldn't it have stayed a golden afternoon forever? _

She found she could not find the answer.

Pulling away, the Hatter said, "Now." He made as if to leave, easily climbing up onto the mantle, his long legs making little work of it.

"Wait," Luttie said. "Your scarf"—and she pulled it out of one of her pockets.

"This may be one of the more spectacular of my mistakes," he said. He climbed down off of the mantle. Luttie wrapped the scarf around his neck, standing on tiptoe to allow for their differences in height, making sure it was securely in place before she let go.

The Hatter crushed her to him once more: she held onto him so wonderfully tightly! He groaned and kissed her again, but it was a rough kiss, awkward and more than a little sideways and stilted all over like a hiccup, saying the goodbye the Hatter found he did not have the words to say after all.

Then the Hatter turned, climbed up onto the mantle—there was a rippling of the glass, as he stepped through, the mirror devouring him whole, inhaling his very muchness into a place Luttie dared not go.

Luttie knew the Cat was right; she would not survive in a place in which she did not exist.

Then the Hatter was gone.

Just like that.

Luttie sat right down onto the hard wooden floor, the carpet which covered it doing nothing to soften the floor, and sobbed into her knees. Her heart hurt. Briefly she wondered if this was what it felt like to die.

What would she do without the Hatter? The Hatter had been with her from nearly the very beginning; only the Cheshire Cat had gone before. She thought fondly of halcyon days gone by, of tea stains on the white tablecloth, and of other small, meaningless things which somehow had been stored in her memory bank.

She remembered the Hatter pulling shadows out of the hat, with the March Hare looking fondly, if not more than a little bit ruefully, on, while the Dormouse snorted away in the teacup; the hat shop where the Hatter had spent half of his time, before Time himself had stolen the Hatter's day from him; the Hatter laughing, smiling, looking petulant and cross and bored nearly to tears with the rambling of the Dodo.

The wonderful sweetness of the Hatter's lips on hers, and the taste of him: he'd tasted of sugary jam, of tea left in the sun and of blue skies with too much wind in them.

The Hatter's face at the concert, pale and unusually grim, as six o'clock was shoved into permanence and everything had dissembled.

But none of those remembrances could bring the Hatter back to her and so she sobbed. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The salt from her tears stained her skin.


End file.
